Shaykh Abdullah bin Hamid Ali's translation of a question posed by the great Imam al-Shatibi to Ibn 'Abbad al-Rundi (who is known for his commentary on the Hikam of Ibn 'Ata Allah)
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
"Ibn 'Abbad appears before the modern reader as someone who was always composed and calm.
He never claimed to have even attained dhauq [the immediate "tasting" of spiritual bliss], but was content with what he learned, as he writes modestly, by studying the books of the early masters. His whole thought is center on the purification of man's soul in order to fulfill the obligations of absolute monotheism. He is convinced that exaggerated attempts are good for nothing: even someone who leads an impeccable ascetic life for the sake of asceticism is still in the claws of self-love, the worst quality. For there is only the One one whom man can rely; only One who is responsible for everything created, and that is God, the Creator, Sustainer, and Judge. To serve Him in sincerity is man's duty and privilege. Man can neither rely on himself nor on other creatures - his only source of help is God, and he has to understand and realize that whatever comes from God is good and has to be accepted gratefully. Even to try to fight the nafs by human means is futile - only God can rescue man from its ruses if man gives himself completely into His hands."
-from Annemarie Schimmel's preface to Ibn 'Abbad of Ronda: Letters on the Sufi Path translated by John Renard, pg. xii-xiii.
This passage from the Qur'an stood out to me recently:
It's from the last page of Sura An-Nahl (16).
"120. Abraham was indeed a leader, submissive to Allah, of pure faith. He was never of the polytheists.
121. Showing thankfulness for His blessings; He chose him and guided him to a straight path.
122. And We gave him good in this world, and in the Hereafter he shall be among the virtuous.
123. Then We revealed to you [O Muhammad]: "Follow the religion of Abraham, of pure faith; he was not of the polytheists."
124. The Sabbath was ordained only for those who disagreed [as to its observance]; and your Lord will judge between on the Day of Resurrection concerning that in which they differ.
125. Call to the path of your Lord with wisdom and kindly exhortation, and reason with them in the most courteous manner. For your Lord knows best those who have strayed from His path, and He knows best who are rightly-guided.
126. If you punish [O believers], then punish with the like of that which you were punished. But if you endure patiently, this is indeed better for those who are patient.
127. Endure patiently [O Muhammad]; your endurance is only by Allah. Grieve not for them [the disbelievers], nor distress yourself because of what they devise.
128. Allah is with those who fear [Him] and those who act with excellence.
-pg. 281 of The Majestic Qur'an: An English Rendition of its Meanings
Monday, January 11, 2010
"It is essential to present Islam in a contemporary language which can be understood by those who have not had long years of training in the
traditional Islamic sciences even if their mother tongue happens to be still Arabic, Persian, Turkish or one of the other Islamic languages. The presentation of Islam in a contemporary language, which fortunately, again, has been carried out to some extent already and with which we have ourselves dealt in the first part of this book and elsewhere, needs to be carried out further and meanwhile young Muslims must learn what is at the heart of their religion and what it is that has enabled Islam to preserve a way of life and of salvation for humanity even after some fourteen hundred years...also the inner dimensions of their own religion which has provided the answers to the deepest philosophical and existential questions facing the ummah.
-240-241 of A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World by Seyeed Hossein Nasr
George Monbiot: The Holocaust We Will Not See
Avatar half-tells a story we would all prefer to forget
Stephen M. Walt: On our terrorism problem
My point is not to rehash the whole debate over the invasion of Iraq (although to be honest, I don't think there's much debate to be had over the folly of that particular decision). My point is simply to reiterate that any serious effort to deal with our terrorism problem has to be multi-faceted, and has to include explicit consideration of the things we do that may encourage violent, anti-American movements. Only a complete head-in-the-sand approach to the issue would deny the connection between various aspects of U.S. foreign and military policy (military interventions, targeted assassinations, unconditional support for Israel, cozy relations with Arab dictatorships, etc.) and the fact that groups like al Qaeda keep finding people like al-Balawi to recruit to their cause.
Stephen M. Walt: "Ain't That Tough Enough?"
The point is that you can be tough without being hawkish, and that’s usually preferable to the mindless militarism that most politicians adopt to show their faux “toughness.” And that’s why it’s much more important that a president be smart and strategic and able to identify the right policy choices, and not worry very much about whether he’s being sufficient “tough” to satisfy his critics. And if Obama tries to base his foreign policy on proving to the GOP he meets their definition of "tough," he'll end up exactly where the GOP's former standard-bearer did.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Frank Rich: The Other Plot to Wreck America
THERE may not be a person in America without a strong opinion about what coulda, shoulda been done to prevent the underwear bomber from boarding that Christmas flight to Detroit. In the years since 9/11, we’ve all become counterterrorists. But in the 16 months since that other calamity in downtown New York — the crash precipitated by the 9/15 failure of Lehman Brothers — most of us are still ignorant about what Warren Buffett called the “financial weapons of mass destruction” that wrecked our economy. Fluent as we are in Al Qaeda and body scanners, when it comes to synthetic C.D.O.’s and credit-default swaps, not so much.
What we don’t know will hurt us, and quite possibly on a more devastating scale than any Qaeda attack. Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed. Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its risks — secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the losses.
The window for change is rapidly closing. Health care, Afghanistan and the terrorism panic may have exhausted Washington’s already limited capacity for heavy lifting, especially in an election year. The White House’s chief economic hand, Lawrence Summers, has repeatedly announced that “everybody agrees that the recession is over” — which is technically true from an economist’s perspective and certainly true on Wall Street, where bailed-out banks are reporting record profits and bonuses. The contrary voices of Americans who have lost pay, jobs, homes and savings are either patronized or drowned out entirely by a political system where the banking lobby rules in both parties and the revolving door between finance and government never stops spinning. [Continue reading]
Juan Cole: Obama: The Age of the War on Al-Qaeda
Obama most unfortunately has allowed the right wing to maneuver him in to reviving the use of the word 'war,' and he is now talking about a 'war on al-Qaeda.' It is not a war, and cannot be fought like a war, and the word is just as misleading now as it was in the Bush-Cheney era. It is a counter-terrorism struggle. Highlighting al-Qaeda, moreover, gives Bin Laden what he always wanted, to parlay a few thousand cranks with weapons training into the central preoccupation of a superpower. Why not say, for our democracy to flourish, we must do good counter-terrorism? Wars imply a Pentagon role, and military action alone is more likely to provoke terrorism than to end it. In fact, if Bush had not invaded Iraq, al-Qaeda might well have died off by now.
Obama again talked about winning hearts and minds for the US in the Muslim world. But as the case of the Palestinian/Jordanian double agent, Humam al-Balawi, who detonated a suicide bomb at Forward Operating Base Campbell in Afghanistan showed, as long as the US backs Israeli encroachments on Palestinian land and Israeli attacks on and sieges of Palestinians, winning hearts and minds is complicated and in many cases impossible. The American right wing keeps repeating the stupid mantra that extremists and militants are 'evil' or 'hate us for who we are.' Maybe some are obsessed like that. But most do cite specific policies that enrage them, like the invasion of Iraq or the gradual ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Vigilante violence is always wrong, and their grievances give them no warrant to harm innocents (which is evil). But if winning hearts and minds is the issue, then US policy in the Middle East is an impediment. The large US footprint Obama is creating in Afghanistan has the potential to be another such obstacle.
A viable Palestinian state, a US withdrawal from Iraq, and an end to the Afghanistan war would do more to drain the swamp of al-Qaeda collectively than all the intelligence reviews and reorganizations in the world.
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